Beautiful

When I call myself Beautiful he comments, rolls his eyes, and uses words like arrogant, conceited, and vain. When I call him Beautiful he is awed, blushes brightly, and smiles, yet all the while questioning the sincerity of my intentions and doubting my telling of truth. It seems the only ones allowed to be beautiful are those brown haired Boston boys with blue eyes and abs designed by Maytag. It seems beauty has become stylized. Redefined reality made real by the reality show casting couch. Illusions of perfection imitating life on sixty-four inch plasma screens. This is not the "Real World" and people do not look like this. People look like me and you and my seventy three year old friend John Rogan: the oldest horniest gayest black man I have ever met; who goes to church every Sunday and who visited his lover in the hospital every Wednesday until he passed; who can list every academy award winner since 1958 and tell you stories so vibrant and wild they'd make you want to be a history major. He is Beautiful . . . The definitions have become too high, and my perceptive is too wide screen to be contained by: "Make Me a Super Model", or "America's Next Top Model", or "America's Most Smartest Model", or "Reality Show Number 6,336". Beauty is not rare. We don't have to do a nation wide search to find it. I see it every hour of everyday in everyone, and if you don't see it, you are not looking right. Your not paying attention . . . or perhaps you are ignoring the obvious. Youth will always be beautiful and blue eyes will always catch your eye, and since symmetry is what makes a picture pretty, digital doctors will always make the best design. But there is something to be said for the askew, for the awkward, and the strange; the interesting and the unique; the short, the freckled, and the four eyed; the bowlegged, the chunky, and the queer; the dark-skinned, the dreadlocked, and the odd. There is something to be said for the beautiful. For the beautiful that are called beautiful by other names. For the ones that are not recognized, who are overlooked, and only found by those who take the time to see. It took time. . . But I found the things in me that I had denied; the things that I had discounted and dismissed; the things that I had tried to hide, and upon reexamination I found them to be blue eyes and fair haired. I found them to be big lipped and bucktoothed, I found them to be 6'2 and muscular. I found them to be pussy boy'd and lisping. I found them to be nineteen and perfect. I found them to be addicted and infected, and I found them to be prayer filled and healthy. I found them to be beautiful. I am beautiful. I am beautiful. I am beautiful. . . And damn it so are you!